Paintball

For Christmas, I got 2 Groupon vouchers to play paintball. Eek! I obviously put this off for a while…

For one, I had never played paintball. I had never shot paintballs with friends running around the woods for fun. I had never even held a paintball gun, or a paintball for that matter.

For two, I had to convince more people to come with. I mean, my husband and I are up for anything and share a lot of laughs together, but just the 2 of us shooting each other didn’t seem right.

So, I finally got organized – in June. Let me go ahead and beg you to book your session in colder weather.

We corralled 2 buddies to join us and headed to Planet Paintball in Moore, SC. Once there, the passes covered a package with guns and paintballs, and the reps helped us pick caliber and protective gear suitable to our novice status. Last touch, in 90-degree weather, adding clothing layers for padding.

The facility was really cool. It was a set-off piece of property, full of obstacle courses. Nothing fancy. Very authentic and outdoorsy. As professional paintball players, I expected the associates to be knowledgeable, but I was grateful for their kindness and non-judgement.

We did teams of 2 and were able to switch partners and play 4 games. We had Gatorade breaks in between and, oddly enough, took our dear sweet time getting back in action. In the end, we were sweaty, exhausted messes.

I kept telling them I would write a blog article about how much exercise this was. Physical and mental acuity – check! Burning tons of kcals in the hour – definitely!

Player highlight… During initial target practice, Aarika tags the head with the first 2 shots. Doot. Doot.